Wednesday, August 24, 2016

This book project on Saudi public diplomacy using primarily the kingdom’s financial muscle has had a long gestation. It focuses on the impact of various policies of the kingdom on Muslim communities and nations across the globe.

In doing so, I will
concentrate on Saudi government policy and actions as well as those of senior
members of the ruling Al Saud family rather than wealthy individuals who may or
may not be associated with them. As a result, theological and ideological
differences between various expressions of Muslim ultra-conservatism fall
beyond the parameters of what I am looking at.

My thinking on this has
evolved in the past year despite having covered the Saudi efforts for many
years from very different angles and multiple geographies. The evolution of my
thinking is reflected in the fact that were I looking today for a title for
these remarks, I’d call it Saudi export of ultra-conservatism rather than Wahhabism.
The reason is simple: Saudi export and global support for religiously driven
groups goes far beyond Wahhabism. It is not simply a product of the Faustian
bargain that the Al Sauds made with the Wahhabis. It is central to Saudi
Arabia’s efforts to position itself internationally and flex its muscles
regionally as well as on the international stage and has been crucial to the Al
Sauds’ survival strategy for at least the last four decades.

There is a lot of talk
about Saudi funding of Wahhabism, yet in the mushrooming of Islamic
ultra-conservatism in the last half century, Wahhabis as a group form a
minority in the ultra-conservative Muslim world. The reason for this is fairly
straightforward: For the Saudi government, support of puritan, intolerant,
non-pluralistic and discriminatory forms of ultra-conservatism – primarily
Wahhabism, Salafism in its various stripes, and Deobandism in South Asia and
the South Asian Diaspora – is about soft power and countering Iran in what is
for the Al Sauds an existential battle, rather than religious proselytization.
One other important aspect is that South Asia has been an important contributor
to ultra-conservative thinking for more than a century. Another significant
element is the fact that while the Saudi campaign focuses predominantly on the
Muslim world, it also at times involved ties to other, non-Muslim
ultra-conservative faith groups and right-wing political groups.

Saudi Arabia’s focus on ultra-conservatism
rather than only Wahhabism or quietist forms of Salafism allowed the kingdom to
not simply rely on export of its specific interpretation of Islam but also to capitalize
on existing, long-standing similar worldviews, particularly in South Asia.
South Asia is also where the Saudi effort that amounts to the single largest
dedicated public diplomacy campaign in post-World War Two history, bigger than
anything that the Soviet Union or the United States attempted, had its most
devastating effect.

The campaign is an issue
that I have looked at since I first visited the kingdom in the mid-1970s,
during numerous subsequent visits, when I lived in Saudi Arabia in the wake of
9/11, and during a 4.5-year court battle that I won in 2006 in the British
House of Lords, a landmark case that contributed to changes in English libel
law.

The scope of the Saudi
campaign goes far beyond religious groups because it is about soft power and
geopolitics and not just proselytization.
It involved the funding of construction of mosques and cultural
institutions; networks of schools, universities and book and media outlets, and
distribution of not only Wahhabi literature in multiple languages but also of
works of ultra-conservative scholars of other stripes. It also involved forging
close ties, particularly in Muslim majority countries, with various branches of
government, including militaries, intelligence agencies and ministries of
education, interior and religious affairs to ensure that especially when it
came to Iran as well as Muslim minority communities like the Ahmadis and
Shiites, Saudi Arabia’s worldview was well represented.

An example of this is
Indonesia where Asad Ali, the recently retired deputy head of Indonesian
intelligence and former deputy head of Nahdlatul Ulema (NU), one of the world’s
largest Islamic movements that prides itself on its anti-Wahhabism, professes
in the same breath his dislike of the Wahhabis and warns that Shiites are one
of the foremost domestic threats to Indonesian national security. Shiites
constitute 1.2 percent of the Indonesian population, including the estimated 2
million Sunni converts over the last 40 years. A fluent Arabic speaker who
spent years in Saudi Arabia as the representative of Indonesian intelligence,
this intelligence and religious official is not instinctively anti-Shiite, but
sees Shiites as an Iranian fifth wheel.
In other words, the impact of Saudi funding and ultra-conservatism is
such that even NU is forced to adopt ultra-conservative language and concepts
when it comes to perceptions of the threat posed by Iran and Shiites.

In waging its campaign,
Saudi Arabia was not alone. It benefitted from governments eager to benefit
from Saudi largesse and willing to use religion opportunistically to further
their own interests that cooperated with the kingdom wholeheartedly to the
ultimate detriment of their societies.

Much of Saudi funding in
the last half century, despite the more recent new assertiveness in the
kingdom’s foreign and defense policy, was directed at non-violent,
ultra-conservative groups and institutions as well as governments. It created
environments that did not breed violence in and of themselves but in given
circumstances greater militancy and radicalism. Pakistan is probably the one
exception, the one where a more direct comparison to Russian and Communist
support of liberation movements and insurgencies in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s
is most relevant.

In many ways, the
chicken is coming home to roost. The structure of the Saudi funding campaign was
such that the Saudis ultimately unleashed a genie they did not and were not
able to control, that has since often turned against them, particularly with a
host albeit not all militant Islamist and jihadist groups, and that no longer
can be put back into the bottle.

The government, to
bolster its campaign created various institutions including the Muslim World
League and its multiple subsidiaries, Al Haramain, another charity that
ultimately pos-9/11 was disbanded because of its militant links, and the likes
of the Islamic universities in Medina, Pakistan and Malaysia. In virtually all
of these instances, the Saudis were the funders. The executors were others
often with agendas of their own such as the Brotherhood with the Muslim World
League or in the case of Al Haramain, more militant Islamists, if not
jihadists. Saudi oversight was non-existent and the laissez-faire attitude
started at the top. Saudis seldom figure in the management or oversight of
institutions they fund outside of the kingdom, the International Islamic
University of Islamabad being one of the exceptions.

This lack of oversight
was evident in the National Commercial Bank (NCB) when it was Saudi Arabia’s
largest financial institution. NCB had a department of numbered accounts. These
were all accounts belonging to members of the ruling family. Only three people
had access to those accounts, one of them was the majority owner of the bank,
Khaled Bin Mahfouz. Bin Mahfouz would
get a phone call from a senior member of the family who would instruct him to
transfer money to a specific country, leaving it up to Bin Mahfouz where
precisely that money would go.

In one instance, Bin
Mahfouz was instructed by Prince Sultan, the then Defence Minister, to wire US
$5 million to Bosnia Herzegovina. Sultan did not indicate the beneficiary. Bin
Mahfouz sent the money to a charity in Bosnia, that in the wake of 9/11 was
raided by US law enforcement and Bosnian security agents. The hard disks of the
foundation revealed the degree to which the institution was controlled by
jihadists.

At one point, the Saudis
suspected one of the foundation’s operatives of being a member of Egypt’s
Islamic Jihad. They sent someone to Sarajevo to investigate. The investigator
confronted the man saying: “We hear that you have these connections and if that
is true we need to part ways.” The man put his hand on his heart and denied the
allegation. As far as the Saudis were
concerned the issue was settled until the man later in court testimony
described how easy it had been to fool the Saudis.

The impact and fallout
of the Saudi campaign is greater intolerance towards ethnic, religious and
sexual minorities, increased sectarianism and a pushback against traditional as
well as modern cultural expressions in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali and Bosnia Herzegovina.

It creates a wasteland
that Saadat Hasan Manto, a Muslim journalist, Indian film screenwriter and
South Asia’s foremost author of short stories, envisioned as early as 1954 in
an essay, ‘By the Grace of Allah.’ Manto described a Pakistan in which
everything – music and art, literature and poetry – was censored. “There were
clubs where people gambled and drank. There were dance houses, cinema houses,
art galleries and God knows what other places full of sin ... But now by the
grace of God, gentlemen, one neither sees a poet or a musician… Thank God we
are now rid of these satanic people. The people had been led astray. They were
demanding their undue rights. Under the aegis of an atheist flag they wanted to
topple the government. By the grace of God,
not a single one of those people is amongst us today. Thank goodness a million
times that we are ruled by mullahs and we present sweets to them every
Thursday…. By the grace of God, our world is now cleansed of this chaos. People
eat, pray and sleep,” Manto wrote.

The fallout of Saudi-
and government-backed ultra-conservatism has been perhaps the most devastating
in Pakistan. There are a variety of reasons for this including,

the fact that Pakistan was founded as a Muslim state
rather than a state populated by a majority of Muslims;

the resulting longstanding intimate relationship;
between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that long before the Afghan jihad against the
Soviets in the 1980s led to constitutional amendments against the Ahmadis and
every Pakistani applying for a passport being forced to effectively sign an
anti-Ahmadi oath;

the devastating impact of the jihad itself on
Pakistan; and

Pakistan’s use of militant Islamist and jihadist
groups to further its geopolitical objectives.

To be sure, the Saudi
campaign neatly aligned itself with the manipulation of religiously-inspired
groups by governments as well as the United States to counter left-wing,
communist and nationalist forces over the decades.

Pakistan had however
from the Saudi perspective additional significance. It borders on Iran and is
home to the world’s largest Shiite minority that accounts for roughly a quarter
of Pakistan’s 200 million people.

The result is that with
the exception today of Syria and Iraq and Bosnia in the 1990s, Pakistan is the
only country where Saudi funding strayed beyond support for non-violent groups.
In Pakistan, the Saudis were at the birth of violent groups that served their
geopolitical purposes, many of which are theoretically banned but continue to
operate openly with Saudi and government support, groups whose impact is felt
far and wide, including here in Britain as was evident with the recent murder
of an Ahmadi in Glasgow. These groups often have senior members resident in
Mecca for many years who raise funds and coordinate with branches of the Saudi
government.

These groups as well as
Pakistani officials have little hesitation in discussing Saudi Arabia’s role as
I found out recently during a month of lengthy interviews with leaders and
various activists of groups like Sipaha-e-Sabaha, Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz
Khatm-e-Nubuwwat, the remnants of Lashkar-e-Janghvi whose senior leadership was
killed in a series of encounters with Pakistani security forces, Lashkar-e-Taibe
and Harakat al Mujahedeen as well as visits to their madrassas.

I want to conclude by
suggesting that the Saudi campaign may be coming to the end of its usefulness
even if its sectarian aspects remain crucial in the current environment.
Nonetheless, I would argue that the cost/benefit analysis from a Saudi government
perspective is beginning to shift. Not only because of the consequences of
ultra-conservatism having been woven into the fabric of Pakistani society and
government to a degree that would take at least a generation to reverse and
that threatens to destabilize the country and the region.

But also because
identification of Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism with jihadists like the
Islamic State has made the very ideology that legitimizes the rule of the Al
Sauds a target witness debates in countries like the Netherlands and France
about the banning of Salafism. Bans will obviously not solve the jihadist
problem but as Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism increasingly is in the
crosshairs, efforts to enhance Saudi soft power will increasingly be undermined.

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James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile